Poems
shouldn’t be read out loud.
They should be written in solitude,
the paper folded into small squares,
plain side out, then passed in secret
like billets doux,
carried around all day
buried inside warm pockets,
pressed against thigh and groin.
Their powers of seduction
so private,
biblical injunctions
leap to mind.
They should be denounced
from the pulpit,
debated on talk shows,
those who write them
subjected to lengthy screening
at airports and borders.
They should be preserved
in a lost language,
the key to deciphering it,
another language lost
to all but a few,
both inscribed
on a hard black stone
with a name like a small flower,
to remind us how encrypted
beauty is,
forced up from rootstock,
and tongue-tied bud.
—Jeanne Wagner
Posted by dwaber at November 25, 2007 01:02 PM